Is Reparations For Slavery A Silly Idea - Berima Amo

I woke up this morning and saw a friend tagged me in a facebook video on reparations. So I thought I will quickly write my views about it. I believe demonstrating has some value but we can expand it a bit.

First of all, I don't think paying of reparations will work at the moment... why? We have to look at nations that are receiving reparations for crimes against them and learn... For instance... Israels' reparations from Germany started after they built a homeland and became a strong nation...

POWER
Africa is the greatest continent. But we haven't harnessed our power to the fullest. Everything the world needs we have, yet we don't control it. If all African nations stop selling our raw materials to the rest of the world, all the world economies will crash in 6 to 12 months. The next big thing is solar power, and guess who has all the sunshine; yours truly AFRICA. We are too blessed to be at the bottom like this. Just imagine that there's not a single super-power or 1st world nation in Africa. Not even a single African nation has a veto in the UN. All our presidents do at these world conferences is give big speeches. It adds no value to anything. We own or control nothing.

Even the land we call our homeland. If today gold/diamond is found on my land in Africa, immediately the government will swoop in and buy it from me to sell it to a foreigner. We have no power at the moment because Africans don't really own or control anything valuable in Africa. But there's hope. We can build to become powerful if we put certain things in place. I'm a strong believer in people. I just am! To talk about reparations, I will tell you this; powerful people will only apologize to other powerful people, period! Japan rebuilt after the 2nd world war before they even started demanding reparations...

Africans/blacks are too scattered and divided to pay anything to anyone...

A few questions that come up are;

1. Who do we pay it to...
2. Which nation will have authority over the money...
3. Which black folks will benefit from the money paid...

So we must first unite economically. Else they will give us the money and find ways to collect it back... Haiti and many other french colonies, till this day, are paying "colonial tax" to the french for gaining their independence...

HOW WE SHOULD COLLECT REPARATIONS.

1. Unite into an economic block - All black nations across the world should have one currency... this will be the most powerful thing we can ever do. This move alone will change the way we sell and buy from outside Africa. We can create and really control our own stock exchange. Like the euro currency, this will make us a big fish in a small pond.
2. All blacks across the globe should have one central bank. Europeans have 2 central banks, one in London (Bank of England) and the other in Washington (Federal Reserve). We blacks have created a central bank vacuum and the western world has filled it by giving us IMF/World Bank. Can anyone point to an African nation that the IMF/World Bank policies help develop into a thriving nation? Just One!
3. After we're done with numbers 1 & 2, then we ask for reparations from every single European country that engaged in slavery. And also ask the Arabs to pay up... their form of slavery was worse than the Europeans.
4. Collect back the moneys paid to the European slave traders by their governments as compensation for losing their slave business - Those families must pay it all back, that money also belongs to us.
5. The french government should pay back all the Colonial tax they've collected from french speaking countries...
6. Remove all our reserves from foreign banks and put it into our own central bank... Keep a little in their banks as control mechanism and bargaining chips... Have a lot of pounds and dollars in our reserves like the Chinese are doing.
7. Make the UN have a memorial day for slavery like the Jews have every year for the holocaust victims.
8. Make movies and documentaries which will be shown on tv almost every evening like they do with Hitler and nazi films.
9. Slavery should be taught in schools like they teach about the holocaust... It's sad that even in Africa slavery is not in our history books... If we don't learn from our past, then we are most likely to repeat it again. By the time you finish university in Africa, you become more European than African. And most of the educated class are snobbish and think they have the right to rule the rest of us because they got some degree from a western university. Like Chancellor Williams said, Africa never gained intellectual independence. Kwame Nkrumah was ridiculed and accused of "Africanizing" Ghana's education system by the intellectual class of his time. In Ghana, we have this terms; efie nyansa (African wisdom) & school nyansa (western wisdom).
10. We must review the works of all multinationals in Africa and kick out those who have plundered our wealth. Just visit villages around Obuasi goldmines in Ghana and see how dilapidated the towns and villages are, even though one of the finest gold in the world is extracted from that region. The people of Africa must re-own their lands and their natural resources. For instance; Ghana discovered oil but the people of Ghana only own 14% of that oil... And the rest is owned by multinationals from Europe and America. Imagine that Germany discovers gold in their nation and another nation or multinational from another nation owns more than the German people do... That is what is happening in black nations. So even though we think we gained independence, we are economically still slaves.

Annually, Africa loses around 46 billion dollars to multinationals but our annual IMF/world bank loans and overseas aid amount to only 30 billion. We use 21 billion of the 30 billion loan/aid to pay our debts to the west and banks and 9 billion, the politicians enjoy. This is crazy. "Robbing Peter to pay Paul" as they say!

Slavery is about economics.

This is a video about the history of Ghana's gold I made a while ago.

The problem with this is anytime this is brought up there are a few blacks who will say we should just forgive & forget. Or even further, the oppressors will find a few blacks to come on tv and present arguments against their own black people. These are the most disgraceful blacks... Their ancestors are turning in their graves as they speak. Shame!

FORGIVENESS
Yes, there's a place for forgiveness in the process, but that's not all there is to it. Being Christ-like is to practice forgiveness. But Jesus also destroyed oppressive systems of His time. What do I mean? He didn't go to the temple to ask them to forgive. he went with a whip. For a long time, we have talked about forgiveness from a weak stance. And we have not understood that the very essence of Jesus' message is to stand against oppression on all levels. The first time He got an opportunity to speak in the temple, this is what he declared;

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those that are broken," Luke 4:18

So after a point, the system wanted to get rid of Him. And that's what I mean by resisting systems of oppression. So this is not about a beef I might have with someone personally. They are two totally different issues. You don't forgive systems, you stop them. We should all work against oppressive systems in our families, neighborhoods, churches, communities, cities, and nations. That is spirituality; setting yourself and others free.

Besides, even though God loves us all deeply, He won't forgive unless you repent. So repentance is key to forgiveness but we blacks are too quick to forgive without requiring repentance, so then the perpetrator keeps doing what he does against us till this day. Look at all the shootings of blacks by the US cops. See how Ethiopian Jews are been treated in Israel. Everywhere you go, blacks are at the bottom; why? And the funny side of this forgiveness theory is we never hear the "chosen people" talk about forgiveness when it comes to the holocaust. Why because, the nazi regime was a system of oppression against the Jews. So one Jew might forgive a Nazi soldier but the government of Israel has a task to try to stop that evil from happening again. So the Jews have a saying, "NEVER AGAIN". So let's not confuse our personal quibbles with a system that oppresses people. You must learn to forgive people. because we are all flawed in our own ways, and without forgiveness, the world would be messed up. But we have to resist and stop systems that oppress people. There's nothing about forgiveness when it comes to systems. So now that we understand how systems work, let's go deeper into how to deal with systems.

SYSTEMS
We only have 4 reactions to any system; submit, corporate, resist, destroy.

1. Submit - When a system is set up, all most of us do is to submit to it. At the holocaust trials, most of the soldiers said they were only "following orders." There was an experiment (Milgram Experiment) held to test obedience/authority where a subject was given instructions to electrocute someone in another room if they got the answers wrong. So the instructor will give the command and the guy holding the switch just obeyed even though they saw the victim screaming in pain (the man screaming was an actor). But this goes to show us how we just obey and never question anything. The word Islam translates submission.

2. Corporate - When we come into contact with a system, a few of us tend to cooperate. Corporation has to do with numbers. Where we feel like everyone or the majority is agreeing with the system so we might as well go along with it. Africa is the biggest continent but on maps, it looks so small. Blacks are the highest population on the earth but the media makes it seem like there are more European looking people. But we are the majority. And even in slavery, it wasn't every European that was involved. Just a few people. Today, we call them the 1%. Even though they are the minority, we still corporate to their will and ways.

3. Resist - To stand against the oppressive and cruel actions of a few against the majority. There have been resistant movements across the world. We should resist those who want to sell us poison as food. We should resist against those we make pills that destroy our bodies. We have become docile. The essence of our spirituality is to resist evil. All the Apostles of Christ were killed, only Apostle John, and even him, he was exiled onto Patmos island with hard labor as punishment. Why, because they taught others to resist any system in their community that oppressed them. That was the Christian church until the Edict of Milan in 313 AD by Constantine. I see myself as someone who resists oppression, in case the powers that be threatens, then I'll move down to corporation (a joke by Dr. Cress Welsing)

4. Destroy - That is why even though Jesus preached love the system wanted him dead, also Martin Luther King who said let's all sit at the table of brotherhood still got shot. Gandhi, Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, I can name them all... Why? Because they destroyed systems that oppressed people. Understand that it's not about weak love. And unfortunately, we have turned Jesus' love message into a weak love. The system set spies among Jesus' congregation, even managed to make Judas their informant, but today when we preach at the pulpit, the oppressors go to sleep because they know we are not really touching their system of oppression and their sins. John the Baptist preached and the palace shook. The prophets of old spoke truths that couldn't be ignored. Jesus destroyed the system without hating the people who engaged in it. Sometimes he even sat with Pharisees and Sadducees to have dinner and chat.

So anyone who preaches love, ask them which of the reactions to the system he is telling us to follow. Should we submit, corporate, resist or destroy oppressive systems with our love. One of the best ways to destroy oppressive systems is to speak truth to power. At this point, we don't even need to be violent because it's all about economics. If we put our moneys in black banks we begin a whole new revolution like that. We got to be smart and intentional about how we forge unity.

GUARDING OUR FREEDOMS AND FINANCE
The oppressor is always planning ways to take your freedom away from you. In Game of Thrones tv series (my favorite), we see that Princess of House Targaryen, the mother of dragons, frees the slaves in a kingdom. But the slave traders left were still planning on how to enslave the people back. Understand that the oppressor never rests. They are always looking for ways to enslave us all, be it European or African or Asian. Look at South Africa today, the same folks who controlled the economics during the apartheid regime are still in control. They found a way back. There's no real freedom until you are free economically. So even after Israel became free from Egyptian slavery, according to the story, God caused the Egyptians to give their wealth to the fleeing Israelites. Think; what was happening?

They want us all under their claws. So we have to be vigilant. If they give us this reparations money and we are not well setup, they will take it back from us through other means. Even I would. No one likes to lose power over people and resources. So don't be shocked that the oppressor has plans of taking every bit of your wealth from you. It's human nature, that's why we the people must be vigilant over our governments and authorities.

"I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up." Napoleon Bonaparte

LESSONS FROM PAUL
Apostle Paul writes to the Christians in Galatia. The back story is, Paul goes to Galatia to preach, and he gets a massive increase and the church grows. When he leaves to another place to continue his preaching, a few people come to preach an oppressive message that brings the Galatians into bondage. I'm sure you've heard a few of those kinda preachings before. So he writes them a letter and he is furious and saddened at the same time telling them to go back to His original message. This letter is what we now call the Epistle of Galatians.

Galatians 5:1(NKJV) "Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage."

That's my favorite bible verse by the way. Before 313AD, salvation was a real word that meant something and could be almost touched. It meant been saved from oppression and bondage. But now it has become a pseudo-spiritual thing that hangs in the air. So guard your little freedom and don't give it away to any multi-national or oppressor.

Reparation is good but only under the right conditions. Israel & Japan has done reparations very well. We don't have to invent the wheel here. We look at their models and tune to our taste and we are good to go. It is my prayer that we get to a place where we decide our economic and social destinies as a people.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section on this issue of reparations. Because together we can come to a consensus and move forward. Thank you.

God Bless You
Berima Amo.